New weather radar for Rotorua

Rotorua District Council has granted Resource Consent approval for MetService to install a weather radar on the Mamaku Plateau this year.

Mayor Kevin Winters said MetService's plans to build a weather radar on the Mamaku Plateau would provide more robust weather data and predictions for the region, and in particular more accurate weather warnings for Rotorua.

“Clearly this will allow us to better understand our area's specific weather conditions and to be better prepared to deal with the effects of adverse weather ahead of us.”

The new radar will provide high-resolution weather information across New Zealand, adding to MetService’s existing network of radars. The radar will be built on farmland near the SH5 summit, north of Mamaku township.

With a range of 300km – and largely uninterrupted views across the Bay of Plenty, Coromandel, Waikato, North Taranaki, Central North Island, and across the ranges to the Gisborne and Hawkes Bay regions – it is expected to be a powerful weather forecasting tool for depicting rain, hail and snow storms.

Its coverage will overlap with the Auckland, New Plymouth and Mahia radars, to provide more comprehensive coverage of the Bay of Plenty area and will also provide back-up cover over a large part of the North Island in the case of equipment failure at other locations.

“MetService, with funding assistance from the Ministry of Transport, is committed to a long-term programme of continuous improvement of its observation systems for New Zealand weather,” said Norm Henry, MetService’s general manager of national weather services.

“Our country’s challenging terrain and highly variable weather, combined with ever-improving technologies, mean that we are always looking ahead to ways in which we can continue to be at the forefront of weather forecasting,” says Henry.

Describing the radar as “having the appearance of a large golf ball sitting on a tee,” MetService project director Tony Quayle said that with local land contours and tree plantings the radar will not be prominent on the local landscape and will be visible only from a few nearby locations.

According to Mr Quayle, installation will probably take up to three weeks and the radar should be operating around August this year.

Data from the new radar will be utilised for MetService’s forecasting, and radar images will be directly available via www.metservice.com.